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#1 The city's population has dropped... The median income is $40,000 and 22 percent of the city's residents live in poverty...16,000 vacant properties... the highest property taxes in Maryland... local income taxes are the highest allowed under state law.

#4 ...Or incorporate surrounding wealthier areas into the city (they won't go voluntarily, but I'm sure our elite can figure out a way to coerce them.) Posted by Glenmore

Easily accomplished through low/no interest ["everyone has a right to own their own home"], federally backed macmansion home loans, and savy developers. Think the gov't isn't attacking the economic firewall of the suburbs? Think again. Don't take my word for it, attend a HS football game.

Accela from DC already stops at the airport and downtown. But there is that hugely expensive proposal to upgrade all the Amtrak railbeds from DC north to Boston, waiting to be resurrected.

Our only hope is to hold this off long enough for the self-driving cars and trucks now in test in Silicon Valley to make it to market. When your own car can drive you exactly where you want to go, and stop along the way when you want to, a lot of the interest in rail travel will wither away.

Of course the fact that it's Silicon Valley's own state gummint determined to blow billions on a new high speed rail line does make it clear that sanity won't prevail automatically....

#10 Heard on NPR (possibly on the Diane Rheem show?), the outgoing Transportation Secretary declaiming that wherever he went during his tenure, people told him they really, really wanted more public transport, whether trains or light rail rapid transit or street cars.